Neil, Niki, and Natalia discuss the history of restaurant reservations.
Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show:
- Restaurant reservations, like so much else, are getting gamified. Neil referred to this New York Times article. We all drew on this overview of historian Paul Freedman’s book and this Atlantic article.
In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History:
- Natalia shared about Britney Spears’ new memoir, The Woman in Me.
- Neil recommended historian Daniel Immerwahr’s New Yorker article, “Beyond the Myth of Rural America” and Steven Conn’s book The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is – And Isn’t.
- Niki discussed Elizabeth Williamson’s New York Times article, “Judge Won’t Let Alex Jones Use Bankruptcy to Avoid Sandy Hook Damages.”








![A lantern slideshows four overlapping illustrations of the Earth depicting its tilt at different time periods in the past, present and future. Dates represented are 13000 BC, 5544 BC, 1921 AD, 2296AD. Handwritten in blue ink at bottom left corner of plate is the text 'G53 CLW [illegible] Aug '22'.](https://i0.wp.com/publicseminar.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Wragge_Earth.jpg?fit=768%2C749&ssl=1)




